In other polling news, Quinnipiac finds Obama rising, Cain rising, and Romney losing some ground:
President Barack Obama’s job approval rating is up, from a negative 41 – 55 percent October 5, to a split today with 47 percent approving and 49 percent disapproving in a Quinnipiac University poll released today. The president has leads of 5 to 16 percentage points over likely Republican challengers.
Voters also are divided 47 – 49 percent on whether Obama deserves reelection, compared to last month, when voters said 54 – 42 percent he did not deserve reelection.
Former Godfather’s Pizza CEO Herman Cain leads the Republican presidential primary field with 30 percent, followed by former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney with 23 percent, former House Speaker Newt Gingrich with 10 percent and Texas Gov. Rick Perry with 8 percent, the independent Quinnipiac University poll finds. No other candidate tops 7 percent.
Cain leads a head-to-head GOP race with Romney 47 – 39 percent, coming close to the critical 50 percent mark, even though more Republicans think Romney has the knowledge and experience to be president.
“President Barack Obama seems to be improving in voters’ eyes almost across-the-board,” said Peter Brown, assistant director of the Quinnipiac University Polling Institute. “He scores big gains among the groups with whom he has had the most problems — whites and men.”
Women also shift from a five-point negative to a four-point positive.
Is it the jobs plan? Obama’s tougher rhetoric at his fundraisers and not-a-campaign bus tour in swing states and not-a-campaign tour across the west? Or dribs and drabs of economic data that suggest we’re not headed to a double-dip recession?
For whatever reason, the public seems to really WANT to like Obama. When Bush's approval plummeted, it stayed down and never rebounded an inch. I don't see how the guy loses next year, especially with the weakest GOP field possible against him.
Reply to this commentLinkReport AbuseOr as Occam's Razor suggests, this could simply be an outlier poll.
Reply to this commentLinkReport AbuseI guess most of the rebound can be attributed to a different composition in sampling. This one has more Democrats, and thus, looks better for the President.
Reply to this commentLinkReport AbuseThis isn't a surprise; Gallup tracking is showing the same thing. There's no question that the jobs bill and the corresponding campaign are targeting blue collar voters in the heartland (i.e. Reagan Democrats, ex-Dem independents etc.). As usual, the election will be decided in the midwest and Obama is laying the groundwork for a comeback on the turf where the Dems were punished so badly last year.
Reply to this commentLinkReport AbuseThe question is: Will he sustain this momentum? He's certainly getting a lot of help from the GOP -- both the presidential candidates and the congressional leaders. Nobody in the GOP is speaking to the midwest blue collar voters right now. These folks may be to the right on some social issues, but they do buy in to economic populism and Obama is exploiting that.
Bush 43's approval rating did not drop continuously - it bounced around from late 2003 to the election but never below 47 according to Gallup. Obama's arc is more like Reagan and Clinton, except that they bottomed out in January 1983 and September 1994 respectively, coinciding fairly nicely with economic expectations. September-October 2011 might be Obama's bottom, but so far there is no sign of an economic inflection point so it could simply be noise or a dead cat bounce driven by a few good media cycles like Gadhafi's death. Rasmussen and Fox are showing no increase in approval, and Fox has been trending Democratic in polls this year. If it is the bottom, Obama has far less time to climb back than Reagan or Clinton did and has to overcome higher _dis_approval than they did due to a more polarized political climate. Note also Obama has seen his approval plunge each summer and fall for the past 3 years (or 4 if you consider his struggle in summer 2008 pre-Lehman). Each year has a different trigger so they may be coincidental, but a repeat in 2012 would come at a very bad time for re-election.
Reply to this commentLinkReport AbuseGrowth was gauged over 2 percent and the stock market went up significantly in October while the GOP candidates were beating each other up, Qaddafy was getting killed and Obama was out campaigning his rear end off. Meanwhile there was limited focus on Obamacare, Solyndra and Fast and Furious (compared to September) and more focus on executive orders which got Obama credit for helping students and homeowners. It is probably more surprising that Obama's numbers didn't go up more.
At this point, most conservatives are still resigning themselves to Romney being the best positioned to win among what amounts to a disappointing bunch of GOP candidates given the opportunity at hand. The key for Romney is not to take too much friendly-fire before he gets the nomination. I contend that the dagger in Bush the younger's presidency wasn't Katrina it was Harriet. If he had nominated Alito the first time, the conservative establishment wouldn't have spent a month cataloging all his heresy's to the base and torpedoed his support. The more emphasis conservatives place on Romney being a flip-flopper, etc. the less likely Romney will be able to generate the enthusiasm in the base necessary to win with enough coattails to bring the GOP count in the Senate to the mid-50s.
I've posted before about how a one-term pledge would probably be a significant boon to Romney's chances as conservatives could vote for him knowing they would get the clean shot with a candidate they really want in 2016. i stand by my assertion. I also believe that Romney's willingness to change his position will be a strength with independents this time around. in 2004 the charge hurt Kerry because people want strength in a war-time president. Obama promised an experimental, pragmatic approach to governance but keeps pushing the same policies he was hawking in 2008 which have been judged by most Americans to have limited to no positive effect. Romney's flexibility may be offered as a virtue in that he will seek what works and is open to new ideas -- for most independents i know this would be appealing. (I would prefer that he was a full-scale ideological conservative, but i would rather have a muddled middle Mitt than another 4 years of statism under Obama.)
Reply to this commentLinkReport Abuse